Boost for waste reclaimers
The City of Ekurhuleni plans to incorporate waste reclaimers in its waste processing programmes.
Waste reclaimers from the Plastic City informal settlement stand to benefit from being incorporated into the City of Ekurhuleni’s formal waste management processes.
In recent years much focus has been placed on recycling efforts as a way of reducing the damaging impact of waste on the environment.
As such, the municipality has plans in place to complement the strides made nationwide to minimise waste through the process of stabilising waste generation and improving the collection and processing of recyclables.
The implementation of the plan is aimed at the reduction of harmful environmental, social and health impacts of waste on people, whilst ensuring sustainable livelihoods from waste recovery.
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Ekurhuleni subscribes to the waste minimisation principles of avoidance, reduce, re-use and recycle.
According to a baseline study conducted by the National Department of Environmental Affairs in 2012, only 10 per cent of an estimated 95 million tons of general waste generated in 2011 was recycled.
The study also revealed that recycling was more common in metropolitan areas with significant variation notable among metros.
Recycling was most common in Cape Town with 22.7 per cent followed by Johannesburg with 16,2 percent and Ekurhuleni with 12,7 per cent.
Significant improvements have been made over the years through the city’s educational campaigns aimed at getting the community involved in recycling.
Among those progressive strides is the city’s plan to incorporate waste reclaimers in its waste processing programmes, such as to regulate the price of all recyclables at the waste buy-back centres.
Therefore, all recycling companies buying recyclable waste from the city can have a flat rate that can give the waste reclaimers a decent income and a better life.
Silver Mayosi from Plastic City supports his family through recycling.
“Every morning I get up and do my rounds with the trolley and my bag collecting waste such as plastic bottles, boxes, tins, plastic and metal, and I sort it categorically and take them to the buy-back centre where every item is bought and paid for per kilogram,” he said.
“I can sell plastic bottles at R4.50 per kg and clear plastic is R2 per kg.
“I also own a scrap metal weighing machine where I weigh scrap metals for recycling for other waste reclaimers and through that I can feed my family.”
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